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BiggerBoat posted:Who else even writes good horror currently? I wouldn't mind a cool scary book right now Bob Woodward wrote a super scary horror novel. It was even called Fear!
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Sep 17, 2019 02:09
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Twitter can be pretty horrifying.
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Sep 17, 2019 02:41
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I like Laird Barron 
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Sep 17, 2019 02:46
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nate fisher posted:The most recent book I re-read was The Ceremonies by T.E.D Klein. It is funny how even though you have not thought about a book in over 30 years, how fast it comes back to you (I remember the ending of the book after just being a 3rd of the way). I will say if you are King fan and like Lovecraftian themes, this book might be for you. Despite being dated and not perfect, I came away loving this book on a re-read. If you can imagine the movie 'The Witness' crossed with Lovecraft, that is this book. It's worth mentioning that it's based on his excellent short story The Events at Poroth Farm, which is slightly more accessible by virtue of its brevity.
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Sep 17, 2019 12:33
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BiggerBoat posted:Who else even writes good horror currently? I wouldn't mind a cool scary book right now Nathan Ballingrud, Iain Reid, Nick Cutter, Joey Comeau, Kathe Koja, Victor LaValle, Jeff Strand, Dan Simmons, Paul Tremblay, Some lesser-known greats: Michael McDowell, Thomas Ligotti, Joe R. Lansdale, There's a whole non-Stephen King horror thread Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 12:50
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Franchescanado posted:Nathan Ballingrud, Iain Reid, Nick Cutter, Joey Comeau, Kathe Koja, Victor LaValle, Jeff Strand, Dan Simmons, Paul Tremblay, Cool thanks for the link!
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Sep 17, 2019 14:49
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Franchescanado posted:Nathan Ballingrud, Iain Reid, Nick Cutter, Joey Comeau, Kathe Koja, Victor LaValle, Jeff Strand, Dan Simmons, Paul Tremblay, Without digging into the other thread, Chuck Wendig's The Wanderers is excellent, and I'm currently reading Alex North's The Whisper Man and it's absolutely fantastic so far.
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Sep 17, 2019 14:49
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Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "Hex" was excellent.
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Sep 17, 2019 14:56
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moths posted:It's worth mentioning that it's based on his excellent short story The Events at Poroth Farm, which is slightly more accessible by virtue of its brevity. I have never read that collection due to the price (cheapest price on Amazon is $42). I hope one day to run into at an used book store cheap. I do still have my original paperback from the 80's of The Ceremonies. Phanatic posted:Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "Hex" was excellent. Yes I recommended that book in this thread awhile ago (like 3 years ago?). One of the better modern horror novels I have read. He has a new book, "Echo", but last I heard it is still being translated to English. So hope to see it in 2020. I looked at my Goodreads read list, and I am surprised by the lack of modern horror novels. I guess I still believe the best horror was written in the 80's and 70's. Out of my recent reads only Kill Creek by Scott Thomas I can truly recommend (not as good as Hex, but I remember liking it). I seen Dan Simmons recommended, but I would recommend staying away from anything he has written since Obama was elected. That said Summer of Night and The Terror are great (so is his science fiction). I am currently doing a re-read of The Shining (I always re-read a King book in late summer or early fall), and I plan to start Chuck Wendig's The Wanderers next.
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Sep 17, 2019 17:07
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The Terror rules and is much better than the show, which was also good
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Sep 17, 2019 17:22
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nate fisher posted:
Dying to see what someone else thinks of The Wanderers.
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Sep 17, 2019 17:47
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Franchescanado posted:Nathan Ballingrud, Iain Reid, Nick Cutter, Joey Comeau, Kathe Koja, Victor LaValle, Jeff Strand, Dan Simmons, Paul Tremblay, I only know Lansdale from his Hap & Leonard series. What is a good horror book of his?
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Sep 17, 2019 18:01
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Krispy Wafer posted:I only know Lansdale from his Hap & Leonard series. What is a good horror book of his? Writer of the Purple Rage or one his other short story collections. Here's a Reader's Guide by DenofGeek
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Sep 17, 2019 18:20
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Phanatic posted:Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "Hex" was excellent. Was about to suggest this one. I think I also saw it suggested way far back in this thread. Great read. scary ghost dog posted:The Terror rules and is much better than the show, which was also good Seconding this. I re-read it almost every winter; it puts my shivering on night shifts into perspective.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:18
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Also putting The Library At Mount Char out there. It's not exactly horror, or even scary as such, but it's a cool twist on evil cults trying to take over the world.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:42
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I don't think that's a very accurate description of Library at Mount Char, but yeah it's very good and fun to read. I still laugh just thinking about the chapter title: About half a fuckton of lying-rear end lies
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Sep 17, 2019 21:37
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Franchescanado posted:Paul Tremblay if you ain't read A Head Full of Ghosts I can't even look at you
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Sep 18, 2019 02:15
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:if you ain't read A Head Full of Ghosts I can't even look at you
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Sep 18, 2019 05:01
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A new a King book is out, is getting really good reviews, and only like 3 posts about it so far? I'm enjoying the read, but very early into it. What the gently caress is a night knocker and what the gently caress is a cheesedog motel?
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Sep 21, 2019 13:28
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blue squares posted:What the gently caress is a night knocker and what the gently caress is a cheesedog motel? As far as I can work out, a night knocker is someone who patrols a town at night making sure everything is ok? I think it's an old-timey american thing. IIRC Clarice Starling's dad was one. I didn't think the book was that great. I enjoyed the intro with Tim, but the Institute bits were, I dunno, not very interesting. Also, why does the world need a number of ultra secret institutions where psychic kids are kidnapped, their parents killed and then tortured until they can kill people. Can't governments just kill the people the precogs identified with, I dunno, guns or bombs? Seems way easier. The worry about nuclear war seems very quaint now, as well.
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Sep 21, 2019 14:22
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blue squares posted:A new a King book is out, is getting really good reviews, and only like 3 posts about it so far? its really enjoyable until you finish it and realize none of it was very good
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Sep 21, 2019 16:13
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King fluffed the ending - say it isn't so?!
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Sep 21, 2019 16:20
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Dead Goon posted:King fluffed the ending - say it isn't so?! no, he fluffed the whole book. its exciting to read but in retrospect it was all pretty stupid.
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Sep 21, 2019 16:24
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:if you ain't read A Head Full of Ghosts I can't even look at you I liked that, but much prefered Cabin At The End Of The World. yikes, that book.
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Sep 23, 2019 12:39
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I am so-so on Paul G. Tremblay. I have read both A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock, and both I had issues with. They were the type of books I find myself racing towards the end not out of excitement, but because I was over them. Not bad books overall (I give them both 3 stars on Goodreads), but I can't bring myself to read anything else by him. Just curious does book Cabin at The End of The World play with is it supernatural or not to keep you guessing? I will say I do believe A Head Full of Ghosts would make a good movie.
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Sep 23, 2019 14:23
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scary ghost dog posted:no, he fluffed the whole book. its exciting to read but in retrospect it was all pretty stupid. Yeah I'm about here with it. I finished all 560 pages after buying the book on Thursday night, so it was a good read that kept me hooked, but I started to lose interest in the final 1/4 and only finished out of inertia. The book was good in the first half for sure, and the escape was very tense and exciting. It was so early in the book that I thought there was a really good chance he would get caught. I had to hold the book a certain way so I couldn't see the next page, since I didn't want to accidentally see that he got caught before I read ahead to it. One of the biggest issues was the lack of time spent bonding between the kids. The book IT is so strong because the kids spend a lot of time bonding (among other reasons). In this book, it would have been good if there was some kind of simulated environment that the kids spent time in and only slow realized was not real, because then they would have time to bond. With the way it is written now, everything is so gloomy from minute 1 that Luke wakes up in the Institute.
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Sep 23, 2019 19:54
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tight aspirations posted:I didn't think the book was that great. I enjoyed the intro with Tim, but the Institute bits were, I dunno, not very interesting. Also, why does the world need a number of ultra secret institutions where psychic kids are kidnapped, their parents killed and then tortured until they can kill people. Can't governments just kill the people the precogs identified with, I dunno, guns or bombs? Seems way easier. The worry about nuclear war seems very quaint now, as well. Ditto. I was expecting some serious existential treat. Like "If we don't torture all these kids to death, then we get the afterlife from Revival," something that couldn't be argued with. And I don't mean "argued with" in a moral sense, just in the "You don't really know that" sense we got here. The assassinations seemed too random for the "We're saving the world, so this is necessary" justifications to be valid so I was fully expecting the precog angle by the end. Also I literally laughed when I read this, which is just awful: quote:Kalisha did. They were stronger together, yes, but still not strong enough. No more than Hillary Clinton had been when she ran for president a few years back. Because the guy running against her, and his supporters, had had the political equivalent of the caretakers' zap-sticks. So incongruous. It's like that bit in The Young Ones: "Neil, the bathroom's free...unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta!"
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Sep 23, 2019 20:39
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There was a really funny moment in the book where someone says "HVAC" and another character is all confused and the acronym is explained. Like people don't know what HVAC stands for. Also Stephen King is obsessed with calling streetlights "arc-sodium lights." I have read that in multiple books by him lol
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Sep 23, 2019 22:46
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So King wrote an enticing read with a lovely ending? Well, gently caress me. Dude has flat out admitted he doesn't outline his stories, writes himself into corners and rather makes poo poo up as he goes like a kid playing make believe on a playground. I enjoy him overall but just once he should start with a bitching ending first and work backwards for a change. Seriously, how many books is this where "it was good but the ending sucked"?
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Sep 23, 2019 23:54
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BiggerBoat posted:So King wrote an enticing read with a lovely ending? Well, gently caress me. That's what he did for Insomnia. A lot of people dont like that book.
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Sep 24, 2019 00:01
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My big issue with Act 3 is that if you have a bunch of really incriminating evidence on a thumb drive, absolutely nobody is going to believe you when you use the thumb drive as a bargaining tool and trust that you haven't copied the data. And in turn, if you use that drive as a bargaining tool and the person you're bargaining with says he believes that you will turn over the thumb drive uncopied, you know that he is lying, because nobody would believe that. And I know that Luke's plan was just to buy time so that the kids could escape, but the vast majority of them didn't escape and were either just plain murdered or were killed by the circumstances of the escape attempt. So the plan sucked and they should just have shot the doctor and the administrator in the face Expanse-style and uploaded the entire drive contents to the cloud anyway.
Phanatic fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Sep 24, 2019 |
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Sep 24, 2019 00:05
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I loved Insomnia, but I'm in a minority on that one in this thread. Then again, I also really liked Rose Madder, and my favorite King book is Desperation, so...
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Sep 24, 2019 02:02
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BiggerBoat posted:So King wrote an enticing read with a lovely ending? Well, gently caress me. I suspect that if he can't conclude a story in 30 pages, he'll just weave other threads in instead. He only stops when he's typed enough rope to hang my enthusiasm.
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Sep 24, 2019 02:30
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I started The Institute yesterday and just finished. It was very exciting to read for most of it, but I agree it all seems dumb at the end. Also, why does SK like to date his books so horribly for the last few years? Do you think people in the future want to read the bullshit "The election was stolen from Hillary  " multiple times in a 500 page fiction book?
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Sep 24, 2019 05:08
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King also shows he has a hard on for Sansa Stark, mentioning GOT multiple times and naming a character Sophie Turner.
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Sep 24, 2019 05:26
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nate fisher posted:Just curious does book Cabin at The End of The World play with is it supernatural or not to keep you guessing? I will say I do believe A Head Full of Ghosts would make a good movie. Cabin... is absolutely unambiguous at the end. I far preferred it to Head Full of Ghosts. FWIT. I'm a King fan and have been for over 30 years, but dammit I'm having trouble getting through End Of Watch. It's just... not good. The tech that the villain is using feels dumb and unlikely (and I know King has written about zombies and vampires, I know). And I read the first two of that trilogy and liked them, and I liked The Outsider. But I just can't get enthusiastic about End of Watch. Someone tell me that it ends well, please.
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Sep 24, 2019 07:05
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Teach posted:Someone tell me that it ends well, please. Thread title?
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Sep 24, 2019 07:45
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I've been trying to figure out why King's endings always seem to affect me differently than everyone else in this thread, and I think I finally got it. The endings, from an emotional perspective, are usually fantastic (hear me out). Characters we've come to care deeply about get to have rich, happy lives, or to die terribly and be properly mourned or to try to make what they can with what they have left after [plot happens]. In The Institute when Avery sacrifices himself and thinks "I loved having friends" I was drat near crying in my Cheerios. In IT, when Bill is half-asleep and almost remembering his friends, same thing, and I can't even tell you how many others. The characters & emotions of King's endings just always hit me right in the feelings. Plot-wise, you are all 100% correct. From O poo poo HAND OF GOD to the ultimate meaninglessness of The Institute itself, to the weird mess that was 11/22/63 and let's not even talk about Under The Dome, drat, there's so much suck for one career. So yes, thread, you are right, but I'm going to keep reading King because I love the way the emotions stick the landing even when the plot doesn't.
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Sep 24, 2019 11:31
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IT and The Stand had fine endings. Salem's Lot, Christine, Cujo...all good resolutions. The Shining, whoohoo that was a good ending. King nerfing his endings appears to be a relatively recent thing. His 70's stuff is great and his 80's material holds up, but when you get into the 90's ugggh.
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Sep 24, 2019 12:54
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i like most of kings endings. firestarter is an all-timer
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Sep 24, 2019 14:21
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